World of Politics with Harry McGee

That was a blast from the past that we did not see coming. On Tuesday, the Irish Independent reported that new Minister for Housing and the Environment James Browne had been briefed by officials on plans to introduce water charges this term.

You could see by the reaction from the Opposition. Within a short while of the news breaking People Before Profit’s Paul Murphy was out on it.

The briefing talked about a very generous water allowance to households and it was only when a house started using 1.7 times more water than the average that charges would be imposed. They would be capped at €500 per household.

That pricing structure sounded familiar; that was because it was the structure that has been mooted for almost a decade but has never been implemented.

Within a short while Sinn Féin was also out on the plinth. Like the other Opposition parties, its spokespeople were expressing concern that this was essentially the beginning of a slippery slope and that they would oppose any attempt to introduce water recharges tooth and nail.

It all turned out to be a false alarm.

Very quickly, James Browne issued a statement. The reference to water charges was included in the briefing he got when he became minister. It referred to a policy that belonged to the last government, not this one.

So not alone was he not thinking about introducing water charges; he had not even begun to think about water charges, he said. To boot, it was not even in the Programme for Government of this administration.

In a video on social media, the Dublin Fianna Fáil TD Paul McAuliffe dramatically tore up the newspaper report. The message was clear. Water charges were very definitely not on the cards.

It was fascinating to see water charges make a reappearance on the public agenda. Fascinating too to see virtually all parties rule them out, including Government parties, as if they were like the penal laws.

The serious idea for introducing water charges – like a lot of other things in this century – came from the Troika.

They came with an agenda of reform and of widening the tax base. Thus they wanted reforms in the public service and the legal professions (unfortunately the latter did not happen) as well as new taxes on wealth (property) and on water (using the polluter pays principle).

Pictured: Water charges…blast from the past.